Wednesday, November 16, 2005

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

Lucky for industry officials, Ted Stevens (R-Oil) didn't swear them in. Though as the article points out, "a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making "any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress." Oops! They investigated Rafael Palmeiro's testimony regarding personal use of steroids. The same courtesy should be extended to oil executives' testimony regarding national energy policy.

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Bob Woodward, total hack. Evidence of hackery. And doesn't this mean that this particular senior administration official didn't "fully cooperate" as Bush ordered and as Scotty McMuffin has claimed all members of the adminisrtation have done? And who the fuck "casually" mentions that sort of thing?